Sept 10, 2003

So it's been a week now back in civilization and I'm still struggling to get things down in words.

It's easy for me to get distracted - especially since the writing process is so slow, and there are so many other interests to distract me.

I've spent the past few days with some technological visionaries - Stig Hackvan and Ben. Also present was Delphine (which is probably spelled wrong and may be fixed later) - a visionary of a different sort. During our first meeting she declared that she found our technology discussions boring.

I realized today that part of my problem is that this narrative necessarily extends back to my time in high school. Luckily, I've already been writing about a lot of that stuff - some of it slightly fictionalized, but it should do. Assuming, of course that I could find it. It's also going to be rather non-linear and needs to be expressed in different orders for different purposes. But you probably don't care about that. "Not yet anyway," I said with a smirk.

So we went what is now two nights ago (Sept 8, 2003) to Palo Alto. We were going to be meeting with Dennis - a successful tech guy who worked on the T-mobile hiptop and is now doing free software for education. Anyway, we were going to spend the night before in a group house where Stig used to live. It's owned by a guy named Daniel, and apparently if you are on the insider list, you can just call up and reserve a guest room for free. The next day, we would swing by more free flex space where Stig has a server and lots of storage space. None of these places are ever locked. I imagine ending up in Palo Alto one day with no place to stay and just walking into a place that looks vacant - sleep in some dude's bed, eat some dude's food, leave a tip on the table and go.

Daniel's house was full of LED and EL wire art. Now, while I declared unilaterally at burning man that EL wire and LEDs are not art, some of this stuff was pretty decent. One piece was apparently in an aesthetometric design. Haven't looked it up yet, but sure sounds cool. Had some great conversations with the people who lived there - there was one guy who was a hardware hacker and one who was a generally marijuana oriented hippie. Bandied about some theories about who really orchestrated September 11, 2001. Stig also brought up Bokononism at some point. If you haven't read Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, you better or I'm gonna kick you right out of my cult. I immediately reacted that a fun thing to say is that I'm a Bokononist monk. This was a Good Thing, because when I called myself a traveling monk earlier that day to Rebecca (another of the 6 denizens of Dan's house), she asked me what kind of monk I was. Now, if that ever happens again, I'll be prepared.

We talked with Dennis at a chinese restaurant. Right outside were two of the urban art series in Palo Alto of aliens bopping around town and crashing their flying saucers into buildings. Dennis said things like "we should make our system work on hardware that people already have, like cell phones" and "you should consider making it a toy for the kids market." This made me feel good, because I had also thought these things. Give me 20 years of tech experience and I'll be meetin' with bright young upstarts tellin' 'em what to do.

Generally, I'm reclaiming my technological roots. Tim got me started back on this, by telling everyone at Burning Man that I am "a great technologist" (this is largely because I gave him a working internet connection in the car, I think). Hanging out with Ben and Stig crystalized it. I'm good at this stuff, and it's just plain dumb for me to throw away my strengths. To this end, I'm starting to look at getting involved in some awesome projects, such as those discussed at Headmap - Ben's site. Please try to recruit me.

It's hard to know where to begin. I'm still very tired, even though I've been doing little more than rest and take care of basic daily existence stuff for two days. But I've finally recovered enough to try to put some of these experiences and thoughts in order. Like as not, I'll go back and revise this later. And do bear in mind that sometimes I don't remember things clearly. When this happens, I just make up stuff that sounds good.

Looming large in my mind right now is my brief run-in with Jesus. Jen Frisbee describes her experiences with this man. I have little to add.

So let's take a step back. I drove to Black Rock Desert with Tim Anderson in my Corolla. Almost all of the extra available room was taken up by my gear. Tim had something like a blanket, a poncho and a couple of water bottles. On our way out, Tim joked that we were driving 2000 miles to go to a party with 30,000 people. "Ah, but it's much more than that," I thought. Or maybe I even said it - you can ask Tim.

There's a lot to say about the journey out, but the most important stuff has to get written first, so you'll have to wait on that.

We arrived Friday evening (which was August 22, 2003 for those of you keeping track) - the event technically opened on Monday and apparently we weren't "legally" allowed to come in at that point. No one told us that at the gate though. Getting there early and staying late afterwards was thoroughly enjoyable for me. It provides a chance to witness this incredible trajectory starting and ending with a vast expanse of bare, dry clay. You also meet some of the best people - many of whom would be very busy. But more on this later.

Tim and I were staying with two separate groups. All told, we were expecting to meet up with about 70 other people for our camps. We were unexpectedly the first of all these to arrive. One of the members of my camp had experienced some minor health problems in Reno (and you don't want to be having troubles with your fluids on the playa) and this delayed my camp by a day. As for Tim's camp, our information had never been very good to start with. So, we stayed at the Blue House. These were the guys putting up the "gyrosphere", which was to be the keyhole to the man or something like that. I never really saw it work or used it as a transdimensional portal, but I will say that it kept a lot of people very busy for a long time and so it must have been pretty cool.

Tim and I went around and bothered people for a little while. They were all trying to get stuff ready and didn't really want to talk. Or sometimes they were just really drunk. We eventually made it back to the Blue House and found a place where we thought we could sleep without getting run over. I went in and asked permission from one of the members, and she said we could camp out if we promised to help out the next day. I acquiesced but then decided to flake out within minutes. I mean, letting us sleep on the ground near a visible object so we wouldn't get hit by cars wasn't really grounds for indenture. Of course, the next day they were very nice to us and tried to help us with getting on the internet and getting some pancakes. And I think that girl wanting us to work for our safety might have been a little drunk - she had a big hickie on her ass the next day. So don't get me wrong, I definately think these guys are good people.

Saturday started out kind of slow, as did most days on the playa. Tim and I tried to get some computer networking happening, explored a little, snagged some pancakes, etc. Later in the day, my camp (Automatic Subconscious) showed up and I started pitching in with that effort. We unloaded the truck and had some cheese and crackers. That evening we hung out at the camp, I made some pasta, played some guitar and some of the girls from Rabbit Hole (one of the other boston camps) came by, including Coco. I think this was partly because their camp wasn't really up to speed on cooking yet.

Sunday was a good day. I meant to do stuff, but largely didn't. We did get some good work done at AutoSub on the shade structure and more truck unloading. Tim and I had some crazy energy and went around bugging people. We were in the process of bugging the ThermoKraken people when we bumped into Ryn from MonkeyPuzzle. She was meeting up with this guy Ted (which is his Real Name even though everyone else but me calls him something else) and also Coco. It's strange how my social networks tend to loop back on themselves as quickly as they do.

So Ted abducted us and we helped him with the first pass on his art installation, which largely involved wrapping his car in sheets and tying them down with rope. And 4 solar powered patio lights. And a doorknob. Art! And definately a Good Time.

More stuff happened, then...

Burning Man is an intense place. A good choice if, as I did, you think you need to be transformed. As far as I can tell, I somehow managed to clear out all the funk from my mind. I expected that the festival would be theraputic, but it was a bit of a shocker that the Big Revelation largely involved a very good dance party (which happened to be at the Blue Room). I misquote Tim (who was likely misquoting as well), "You've gotta free your behind to free your mind."

It makes some sense. I had been experiencing a sort of intermittent malaise the first few days about Burning Man at night being largely equivalent to Daytona Beach or Disney's Pleasure Island. But the dance party is basically What It's All About (you may note that a slightly confused version of this idea has already been communicated to the English speaking world in "The Hokey Pokey"). It's people coming together, participating in a joyful activity with each other - with people of all skill levels being welcome and able to participate, watch or in Tim's case, sleep. You can prepare for a hard night of dancing by wearing some awesome pants or taking Capoeira lessons. Opportunities for personal and group excellence abound.

I had been trying to deaden my mind. Sometimes I would use alcohol but it wasn't necessary - I could simply avoid thinking about things that troubled me. But on the dance floor that tuesday night, I managed to enter fully into having a good time with my 30,000 friends. And I realized I could be doing that all the time.

In a way, I'm learning lessons that I was trying to teach other people. The primary idea behind Ritual Brunch was that "just having brunch" was one of the most incredible or profound things one could be doing with one's Sunday morning. I guess if I didn't get it, I can't expect that any of you did either (except for those of you that already this already).

So now I'm OK. Or at least recovering. But I'm finding people all over now who still have something like the problem that I had. It is now my primary mission in life to help as many people party as I can. Or something like that.